THE YOKOHAMA MURDER

Evening Star, Issue 10412, 6 September 1897, Page 2

THE YOKOHAMA MURDER

MRS APPEAL.

On Wednesday, Jely 14, the Lord Chancellor, Lords Hobhouse and Morris, Sir Richard Couch, and Sir H. Strong, sitting in the 1 House of Lords as a Judicial Commit" tee of the Privy Council, heard the case of Carew v. Crown Proseoutor of Japan. This was/a petition for. leave to appeal from a decision and judgment of Her Majesty's Court for Japan, the petitioner being Mrs Gatew, who was convicted of poisoning her husband, Walter Raymond Hallowell Carew secretary of the Yokohama United Club, by thV administration of arsenic. The case caused grea v t excitement, not only in Japan : bstUn England, >t. the time, owing to the mysterious character.- of, the circumstances surrounding it, and it was compared to the notorious Maybrlck case. After a prolonged trial Mrs Carew was found guilty and sentenced to death, but subsequently the death penalty was commuted to imprisonment for life, and she is now undergoing her sentence at Hongkong. The petition set forth that the sentence ought to be quashed on three grounds—(l) That the Court had no jurisdiction ; (2) that evidence was improperly admitted ; and (3) misdirection.—Sir Frank Lockwood, Q.C., appeared in support of the petition,—ln giving judgment the Lord Chancellor said their Lordships were of opinion that Her Majesty had full power and jurisdiction, under the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, to establish a court in Japan for the trial of her subjects, with a jury of five persons. As to the other points, the rule was that this Court did not review criminal proceedings except in cases, where there had been a decision contrary to" natural justice, or where there had been a grave failure of justice, and nothing of the sort was alleged here. Leave to appeal must, therefore, be refused.